Marco Rubio ‘amnesty’ sparks radio static

Sen. Marco Rubio tried to sell his immigration plan on Thursday to conservative talk radio hosts gathered from around the country in D.C., but it just didn’t fly.

Rubio sat down for interviews with four right-wing talkers at the Federation of American Immigration Reform’s annual immigration “Hold Their Feet to the Fire” radio row in Washington — and each said they were not convinced by the senator’s pitch. As in 2007, when conservative talk show hosts helped mobilize opposition to immigration reform and blasted it as an amnesty program, local radio talkers have proven they can turn the tide against legislation.

Border security and enforcement must come first, and there must be no “amnesty,” the radio hosts told POLITICO in interviews after they spoke with the Florida Republican. Without that, they will lead the fight against the Gang of Eight’s plan, the talkers vowed.

“Number one, you don’t give anybody amnesty who broke the law,” Genesis Communications Network’s Mike Siegel said. “You don’t reward people who committed a crime. I don’t get rewarded if I do 65 miles per hour in a 55 zone. There should be no path to legal residency for them.”

In a series of tough, pointed on-air interviews with radio hosts Siegel, Rusty Humphries, Michael Brown and Lars Larson, Rubio repeated his pitch again and again: What the country has now is “de facto amnesty” and it would be better for everyone to recognize there is a problem, “freeze it” and tackle it with this bipartisan compromise. But the hosts weren’t buying his spiel, telling the senator that without dealing with their one key issue first — border security — there was no way they could support his plan.

“That was my original position,” Rubio told KHOW’s Brown, who broadcasts out of Denver, during an interview at the Phoenix Park Hotel just blocks from the Capitol. “Let’s do the security first and then let’s legalize the folks that are here. The problem with that is, what do we do with them in the meantime? In the meantime, while we’re waiting to finish the security part, we’ve got millions of people running around, working on documents that aren’t theirs, not paying taxes, unidentified, we don’t know who they are. We’ve got to freeze that problem in place before it gets worse.”

After speaking with Rubio, Brown told POLITICO that the senator “convinced me of his sincerity about trying to do something.” But the talker said he personally remained unconvinced that the Gang of Eight’s bill is the answer to fixing the country’s illegal immigration problem.

“First and foremost, let’s secure the border. It’s a national security issue. Do that first,” he said. “And you know what? Then, say to the Democrats, you know, let’s do this first, it’s what the American people want, and then we’ll go into the rest of it.”

Like Brown, Talk Radio Network’s Humphries praised Rubio — “I like him personally, I think he’s a sharp guy,” the host said — but said the senator’s Thursday pitch wasn’t enough to earn his support for the legislation. And again, Humphries reiterated what his fellow conservative talkers said: Border security must be priority No. 1, and there can be no amnesty.